As far as I know, none of the geocoders consistently provide neighborhood data given a street address. Useful information when consulting the gods at google proves elusive too.

Here's a step-by-step guide to obtaining neighborhood names for your street addresses (on Ubuntu).

0. Geocode your addresses if necessary using Yahoo, MapQuest or Google geocoders. (this means converting addresses into latitude and longitude).

1. Install PostGIS.

sudo apt-get install postgresql-8.3-postgis

2. Complete the postgis install

sudo -u postgres createdb mydb
sudo -u postgres createlang plpgsql mydb
cd /usr/share/postgresql-8.3-postgis/
sudo -u postgres psql -d mydb -f lwpostgis.sql
sudo -u postgres psql -d mydb -f spatial_ref_sys.sql

3. Download and import Zillow neighborhood data. For this example, we'll be using California data.

cd /tmp
wget http://www.zillow.com/static/shp/ZillowNeighborhoods-CA.zip
unzip ZillowNeighborhoods-CA.zip
shp2pgsql ZillowNeighborhoods-CA public.neighborhood > ca.sql
sudo -u postgres psql -d mydb -f ca.sql

4. Connect to psql and run a query.

sudo -u postgres psql -d mydb
select name,city from public.neighborhood where ST_Within(makepoint(-122.4773980,37.7871760), the_geom)=true ;

If you've done everything right, this should be returned from the SQL:

name | city
—————-+—————
Inner Richmond | San Francisco
(1 row)

Voila!g

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